1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mobile communication system and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus of cooperative caching among base stations of the mobile communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile communication systems have been developed to provide mobile subscribers with voice communication services. With the rapid advance of mobile communication technologies, mobile communication systems have evolved to support high-speed data communication services as well as standard voice communication services. Meanwhile, limited resources and user requirements for higher data rates in current mobile communication systems spur evolution to even more advanced mobile communication systems.
Web caching is one of the main techniques for improving the performance of a world wide web-based communication system. Web caching temporarily stores web documents such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages or images for later retrieval, in response to a request for the same documents, so as to reduce the bandwidth usage and load concentrated on the server.
However, conventional web caching methods have a drawback in that the data, even it is frequently used, must be retrieved from other caches. If the requests are concentrated on a cache having data that is frequently accessed, the increased traffic in the cluster is likely to cause a bottleneck effect on a corresponding link to a specific base station.
Therefore, there is a need for a more efficient cooperative caching method in a mobile communication system.